London- The third season of “The Morning Show” was undeniably ambitious in its storytelling and stakes, jeopardizing the future of the fictional network UBA and at the same time revealing its favorite characters. For Billy Crudup, it was a difficult journey to navigate as viewers learned more about Cory Ellison, the charmingly flawed CEO of UBA. After playing Cory for several years, Crudup's instinct was not to delve into the character's psychology as the writers wanted.
“They kept tightening the screws on Cory and trying to illuminate some of his previous life and his previous relationships and his way of thinking outside of the office, which at first I felt very protective about,” says Crudup, speaking in April in London, where he performed in the one-man West End show “Harry Clarke”. “I was like, 'No, don't show any of that shit.' His whole game is that people don't know what he's thinking. The unpredictability of his mental gymnastics, his own way of handling social and corporate situations, is his special sauce, and it's what makes chaos so useful to him, because he's very, very good at processing information on the fly. . “I'm not interested in knowing how that is done.”
Crudup has established Cory as one of the show's most compelling figures. He is a complex enigma who is perpetually excited by challenges and uncertain situations. But in Season 3, Cory faltered, perhaps for the first time in his life, and found himself out of a job at the end of the finale. Crudup has found Cory fascinating since he met him on the page when Jennifer Aniston suggested she audition for the series after seeing him in an earlier production of “Harry Clarke.”
“His mind is uniquely capable of holding several complicated ideas at once and finding corresponding narratives between them, and that way of thinking fascinated me,” Crudup recalls. “I have a friend who has a similar ability. We went to university together. He finds delight in it, and I think that's where I got some of Cory's delight. Like, 'Oh, my brain just thought of this.'”
Crudup was never interested in playing Cory as your typical media executive striving for power or success. That didn't seem like the right contrast against Aniston's Alex Levy and Reese Witherspoon's Bradley Jackson. He wanted to create someone against whom the protagonists could sincerely fight, ensuring that the story could “reach its full potential.”
Reese Witherspoon stars alongside Billy Crudup in “The Morning Show.”
(Erin Simkin/Apple TV+)
“Whether he's a buffoon or whether he's just serving his own ego or manipulating it, I don't find it very interesting,” Crudup says. “[But] He fits all the archetypes of someone in that position of power. They let him into the club because he looks like them. He's successful, he's straight, he knows how to talk in the locker room. He uses it as a way in to destabilize it.”
Still, Crudup wasn't sure about episode 7, “Strict Scrutiny,” in which Cory tricks Bradley into accompanying him to see his mother, Martha (Lindsay Duncan), to convince her to help push through the company's planned merger. UBA at the Department of Justice. He performs an impromptu rendition of “Ai n't No Mountain High Enough”, but is eventually embarrassed by his mother, making him wonder if he is a bad person. It took Crudup, who actually sang in the scene, to rework what he had imagined about Cory's bond with Martha.
“It didn't exactly fit my idea of who she was or what their relationship was, or what kind of caregiver he was,” Crudup says. “You have to go back and weave that together. It is a very strange experience. It's complicated. And especially for someone like Cory, who is already complicated and opaque in some ways and doesn't share much of himself.”
“Whether he's a buffoon or whether he's just serving his own ego or manipulating it, I don't find that very interesting,” Billy Crudup says of his “Morning Show” character.
(Jesse Dittmar / For The Times)
Cory and Harry Clarke are the two fictional people Crudup has spent the most time with in his career. He's grateful to have spent time with someone as intriguing as Cory, especially as an actor who describes himself as “someone interested in character.” When Aniston first approached him about “The Morning Show,” the offer was open. He could have played anyone. But Crudup only wanted Cory, and he remembers him saying, “Yeah, I like that weirdo.” It was an uphill battle to get cast, even though Aniston defended him, but Crudup proved his instincts were right when he won the Emmy for Supporting Actor in a Drama for the show's first season.
“I have two brothers, so I'm prone to competitive gloating, but what I actually felt was incredibly grateful,” he recalls. “I think my manager and my agent told me, 'Look, he said he could do it and he did it.' But you never know how a show will turn out. I've worked on so many things that I thought were absolutely extraordinary and no one gave a damn. I don't think I've ever been in a movie that made money. 'Almost famous' lost money. But I have been pleasantly surprised and amused by the success and permanence of 'The Morning Show.'”
Crudup is currently filming a role opposite George Clooney in Noah Baumbach's next film before returning to the set of “The Morning Show” this summer. And like the rest of us, she has no idea what the future holds for Cory. But even that is interesting.
“I think your failure will be processed the same way you process learning something new, with delight,” Crudup says. “He does it in the last episode with Bradley when he says, 'Well, I'm still the architect of the biggest failed deal of the 21st century.' And he thinks that's cool. That energy will move him forward and give him the opportunity to resurface.”
